


x

by itsgoodtobeking



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, dat gotham winter finale tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9550292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsgoodtobeking/pseuds/itsgoodtobeking
Summary: It's not the first time Oswald's been walked down the pier.(Just a drabble centered around the critical moment at the end of s3x14. So, uh, SPOILERS. I couldn't let that scene go, man. Also there are minor deviations in dialogue and such here.)





	

A bell tolls in the near-distance, the sound rolling through the fog.

There's a gun leveled at Oswald's chest.

Ed could put a round through a lung easily enough. Leave him drowning in his own blood like he could've that night in the woods so long ago. Or put one in his heart - too big for his chest as it swells with everything that's gone unsaid, everything going to waste - and it'd take it. It'd take anything Ed gives him, hungrily, because it doesn't know any better. 

But Oswald has the feeling from the look in Ed's eyes that that'd still be too good for him.

"Ed... Edward." His head swims. "Listen to me - what you think you're prepared to do is something you'll _never_ come back from. Believe me--"

There's a lightning flash of emotion across Ed's face.

"You did this, Oswald!" He snarls through his teeth, jabbing the gun at him. His chest heaves violently. "All this is on you!"

It's what Ed thinks he deserves -- and Oswald thinks he finally understands. Of course it's selfish to try to have a say in how and when he dies when Isabella never had the luxury of a choice. Like everyone else, she had died to clear his path or to forge a new one. Just another body to climb in his grasping for power, that futile search for things to fill that needy black hole inside him with. But this - this isn't the way it's supposed to be.

Not like this.

Oswald knows he should be shaking with fury but he isn't. He's just shaking, sick, as a chill slices his wet skin like a razor. It takes a few bobs of his throat to get his voice to work.  "...you can't do this!" He sucks in a sobbing breath. "I won't let you!"

It's not enough; he knows that too. And he knows now that he'll never be able to fill that place in Ed's heart Ed made for her, and that all the power in Gotham won't ever make him enough. If there had ever been hope for them, for something better than this - standing opposite each other with a gun between them -  it died when that train barreled down the tracks and slammed into Isabella's car.

A tic pulls at the corner of Ed's mouth and he clenches his jaw against it, a muscle flexing in his cheek. His finger trembles around the trigger. 

Oswald stares back, his face wrenched with anxious futility. "Please..." He tries, and it's so small and strangled. "I'll do anything...!"

Something clicks and the lights go out in Ed's eyes.

"I know." He says.

Oswald feels it punch the air out of him first. Then hears the bang, his ears ringing. It doesn't seems real even as blood crawls hot through his fingers, even as Ed snaps out his hand and grabs a fistful of his shirt, dragging him close enough that he can hear Ed's breath shudder in and out his lungs. Or, maybe, it's just the sound of his own breath when a wave of pain hits and his body trembles and dry-heaves. And for a long moment, while they stare at each other - while dozens of microexpressions flicker across Ed's face, complex things Oswald can't begin to read - Oswald's so sure he'll feel the barrel of the gun jam into his temple. The fate of all things that outlive their usefulness in Gotham. What he expects, now, from this cruel, unfamiliar Ed Nygma he had a part in bringing to life.

A beat passes. Then another. Ed's still holding onto him, his knuckles white.

"You did this," he hisses, spit flecking Oswald's chin.

Then Ed lets Oswald go with a shove that sends him off the pier and into deep waters.

The river swallows him, wanting to keep him there. It will if he lets it. But this goodbye isn't forever. They seldom are in Gotham, and neither him or Ed know how to leave, to give up, to let go. So Oswald Cobblepot will do the only thing he knows how to do and he'd survive somehow, friendless and motherless, lead burning in his guts. He'd do it out of spite, if nothing else - living to haunt Ed Nygma just as Ed Nygma would always haunt him.

Gotham's already calling through the black haze eating into his vision; Oswald can feel the pull in his bones and he knows he'll make it back crawling, if he had to.

He would find Ed again.


End file.
